Program evaluations can play an important role in formulating goals, objectives, and implementation strategies for a variety of planning activities throughout the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Program evaluations also tell us whether our efforts are successful. While there are still gaps in what we know, we now are beginning to as

In some cases, achieving our strategic goals and objectives may be impeded by factors that are beyond the control of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For example, national or local economic conditions can influence whether we are successful in helping families on welfare become economically independent. In some cases, there may b

Many programs within the Department have goals, objectives, and target populations that appear similar. Likewise, many Department programs appear to duplicate or overlap programs in other Federal agencies. Many state, local, and private sector programs also have goals, objectives, and target populations in common with Department programs. Because

Article 8 , on "the processing of special categories of data," holds a number of provisions that could be problematic for health research.
¶ 1. Member States shall prohibit the processing of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, and the processing of dat

Because irreversible anonymization often is undesirable on scientific grounds, the procedures and methods of key-coding of various forms are essential techniques. Some of the practices are very technical. Degree of key-coding or "masking" is relative. It is a question of the extent to which personal identifiability is obscured—which is to say, t

Much very useful health research is performed on completely anonymized data. If for a particular research project there are no compelling reasons for retaining at least potential identifiability, anonymized data should be used. Though this injunction might sound unnecessary, it is stated here because often, data with identifiers are used just beca

All over the world, health and disease are monitored. Starting with prenatal observations and birth data, throughout life health-related measurements and observations accumulate. Analyses are made to portray the "natural history" of diseases and disabilities—how they start, progress in a person or spread to others, and run their courses. Also an

Among the most important resources for research are databases and registries of health experience. Some are highly specialized but not very large; some are broad and enormous. Some are maintained only for research; some are primarily maintained for administrative or other purposes but are available for research. They may be organized by illness (l

Social stigma of drug abusers was cited as a market barrier by representatives of two of the pharmaceutical companies, though it is regarded as surmountable if the commercial and scientific viability of the product is favorable. The pharmaceutical companies that identified social stigma as a barrier were familiar and sympathetic to the case experi

Two market barriers related to drug marketing were identified. As previously described, the possibility of the pharmacotherapy being distributed through publicly-funded treatment centers rather than through physician offices was a concern of the pharmaceutical companies because of the companies' limited access to patients.

DEA regulation was not generally cited by pharmaceutical company representatives as a market barrier. One interviewee mentioned the potential risk of exposing an existing successful product used for other indications to cocaine treatment. The company indicated that the increase in development costs of the drug and the potential for rescheduling of

Three of the four case study drugs were for patient populations perceived to be difficult to study for a variety of reasons (e.g., patient recruitment, compliance, and co-morbidities). For example, patient compliance has been seen as a barrier to the success of naltrexone in both the heroin addiction and alcoholism markets, because the drug is not

Some of the market barriers identified in the 1995 IOM report were confirmed through the interviews with private firms and case studies conducted for this effort. Figure 36 summarizes the market barriers that were confirmed (in full or in part) and not confirmed during this study. (As noted above, the number of interviews and case studies was limi

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